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Finland’s institutional pragmatist

Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen has a very pragmatic approach to the question of institutional reform and one which is very much in line with European Commission President José Manuel Barroso’s twin-track approach to the years ahead. In a speech to the Finnish parliament last week (21 June), he explained that the Union needed to “move on from mere reflection to delivering concrete results and implementing projects”.

He described the EU’s current situation as a “vicious circle” of “weak legitimacy and ineffective decision-making”. Citizens did not see the relevance of the Union to their daily lives so the EU suffered from “weak legitimacy” and “low popularity”. Member state politicians felt they had to defend their national interests more strongly than ever in Brussels and therefore found it difficult to agree common solutions to global problems.

The answer, he said, was for the EU to demonstrate its ability to take decisions and show its strength in areas such as economic performance, external relations and security. By delivering results the Union would “gain new legitimacy and the prospects for treaty revision would improve,” he said.

While the Finns are aware that the German presidency in the first half of 2006 has been asked to draw up a roadmap for the steps towards a decision on the need for new Treaty reforms in 2008, Vanhanen’s team does not intend to sit on its hands over the next six months. A paper on the preliminary agenda for the Presidency sent to the Parliament in May said that Finland would “start work on exploring the options for the constitutional treaty” during its term of office, saying that it was time to move on from the “period of reflection”.

The possible options will inevitably include the scope for renegotiating the constitution in terms of stripping out or cutting back certain parts or adding new protocols. The Finns will therefore be laying the groundwork for the German presidency, which will start with a fairly good idea of where most countries stand on what should be saved from or added to the existing negotiated text. There will of course be several question-marks, not least because the French and Dutch positions will depend on the outcome of elections there in May. But it suggests that, at the end of the German presidency, Merkel will be in a position to present more than just a timetable of dates on which key decisions have to be taken.